invitations as to a lunch, though the abundance of choice viands served up usually tempted him to make it a full meal; and his keen perception of character ensured him endless amusement among such society.

Alick Cohen had never loved study, so far as books were concerned; but he was naturally of an inquiring turn, and impressed not only vividly but deeply with whatever was presented to him through the medium of common occurrence or conversation. Far from being deficient either in sense or talent, his mind had remained comparatively inert, more for lack of any suitable stimulant to force it into action than from indolence. At home he had known no wish that could not be gratified by touching a bell-rope; and at school a well-filled purse wrought its wonted effects. The society wherein he had moved was of that polish which wears away, from the surface at least, all irregularities of character; and thus he had been becalmed on the smooth waters of a rich citizen's life, long enough to render the present contrast enchanting.

Some of his young friends in the gun-room were highly bred; a title, more than one Honourable, and several of his own class, ranked among them; but though some affected the fine gentleman, and strove against the infection of their comrades' blunt hilarity, they could not succeed in chilling the genial atmosphere around them; more particularly as such at. tempts were pointedly put down by the captain and first lieutenant, two disciplinarians of the old school,

and still more effectually checked by an individual of subordinate rank; but who, perhaps, possessed more real influence among the middies than any other man on board.

This was the gunner, a fine old seaman, who had risen by sterling merit to that important post, and whose thorough knowledge of his profession, peculiar aptitude for communicating it, and unbounded kindness in affording valuable information, had rendered him an oracle among the inexperienced officers. He was rough and unceremonious, but never harsh or rude. His broad, honest face beamed with intelligence, benevolence, and manly decision, while his quick eye seemed formed at once to detect and to reprove anything reprehensible. Alick took great note of him, seldom losing a remark that he uttered; for in his heart he had already resolved by some means to enter the service; and the information that any attentive listener might derive from Gordon's general discourse on nautical subjects was likely to prove of material use. The grand feature, however, in the gunner's character he did not comprehend, for Gordon was spiritually-minded; a true, firm, and consistent believer.

The senior midshipman, a disappointed and discontented man, openly broached infidel principles, in which he was covertly supported by one of the assistant surgeons, who prudently refrained from committing himself directly on that point. The schoolmaster, well read in Paley's Evidences, and armed

with such Christianity as man may learn from man, constantly met and repelled all serious assaults on revealed religion; but allowed the sneer, the laugh, the banter, to pass unheeded. Gordon, whose constant care it was to uphold the relative authority of each officer in the ship, refrained from interposing when the schoolmaster came forward; but many a rebuke did he administer on occasions when, but for him, the ground would have been undefended. Sharpe, the infidel, was much disliked by his comrades, who relished seeing him wincing under Gordon's lash; and what between well-merited love, and salutary dread, of the old gunner, the latter enjoyed an exemption from those petty persecutions which too often are the lot of a Christian in his situation.

In

Alick's Hebrew origin had not been surmised. the little billets occasionally handed to him he was usually addressed as 'Coane,' and he himself bestowed no thought on the matter. It happened as they were beating off the Cove of Cork that he strolled into the gun-room with one of his young friends, just as the debate was running high between Mr. Sharpe and the schoolmaster. The former, it seemed, had denounced the whole Bible as a tissue of falsehood and folly; while the latter was, with more earnestness than usual, upholding its divine authority. A group of middies surrounded the combatants, of whom one was drawing a caricature sketch, while Gordon was delighting a mere child, just entered as a midshipman, by superintending the

carving of a ship's hull with his penknife. Alick took his station in the midst of the listeners.

'All that you have said is vastly fine, Mr. Cowper,' said Sharpe, but it amounts to just this; certain predictions appear in the Old Testament, and their fulfilment is recorded in the New; so you make the two parcels of the Bible reciprocally prove each other; whereas I take leave to regard them both as parts of one great forgery, framed so to support one another's pretences.'

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Setting the New Testament aside altogether,' replied the other, I refer you to the fulfilment of prophecy in the nations around us.'

Of which a great deal took place before the prophecies were written,' said Sharpe, contemptuously, ' and the rest would have come to pass in the natural course of events, even had they not been so shrewdly guessed at, and, as you called it, foretold.'

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'Impossible!' said Cowper, no human sagacity could have foreseen the occurrences that have fallen out, exactly as foreshewn in the pages of inspiration. But leaving all others, I will take up one point alone; what think you, sir, of that universal problem, the outcast, miserable, degraded Jews?'

Why, I think them a pack of very great vagabonds,' answered Mr. Sharpe.

Undoubtedly they are; the very offscourings of the world, a by-word, a hissing, a scorn, and a reproach; but was not this foretold?'

'Yes, and in the same way I could sit down and

write a prophecy that Poland should be dismembered by the Russians.'

Well, sir, but supposing the Bible to be ever so modern a book as you fancy it, only a few centuries old, still I maintain that the lapse of those few centuries was sufficient, nay certain, in the common course of events, to have obliterated all natural trace of such an outcast race, amalgamating them with the various people of the earth, or exterminating them altogether by the many and severe persecutions that they have undergone. Instead of which, you find no country under heaven without the Jew, bearing the brand of his crime, the curse of God, and the universal contempt of his fellow-creatures.'

Look at Sharpe, how he is posed and caught, whispered a middy to another who was leaning on Alick's shoulder.

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'Ay,' responded the other, fairly caught in the bag of an old-clothes'-man, and Jewed out of his prime argument.' This excited a laugh among those who heard it, and a variety of witticisms were bandied about, all deriving their point from some malicious or contemptuous allusion to the Jew.

:

Sharpe replied, but Alick heeded not his words a sensation of wrath and shame, such as he had never before experienced, thrilled through him. The latter, however, predominated for the moment; he felt abashed, crushed beneath a weight of odium the more cruelly bitter because it was wholly free from any personal allusion. All the epithets of scorn bestowed

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